Written by Josh Ishimatsu
When thinking about policies to address homelessness, we need to remember the Kenyan saying, “Cheap is expensive.”
One half of one of our couple-friends is a 2nd generation Kenyan immigrant from his father’s side (not the Obamas, if you were wondering). One time when we had them over, we were sitting on our back patio, and we were apologizing for how jenky our patio furniture was – you had to be careful not to be stabbed by the pieces of wood that were sticking off the furniture or if you shifted your weight too fast, the chairs were in danger of completely collapsing. The furniture was barely over 1-year old, but pieces were already falling apart. We had not bought the cheapest patio furniture, but it was pretty close to it. Nathan – the husband with Kenyan roots – responded that there is a Kenyan saying, “Cheap is expensive.”
This saying “cheap is expensive” is something that I’ve added to my toolbox. I tell people it’s a Kenyan saying to make it sound more wise and me sound more worldly. But I don’t know if it’s really from Kenya. A quick google search says that lots of people use this saying without any reference to Kenya. And I’ve been burned before in a situation where a 2nd generation friend represented that they were dropping some old country knowledge, and it turned out that it was just something that one of their relatives made up.
At any rate, patio furniture that only survives one summer exposed to the elements and then has to be replaced is NOT cheap, regardless of the purchase price. Cheap is expensive. The saying is short and true and clever in all the ways that a good saying should be.
The logical corollary to “cheap is expensive” is that, sometimes, expensive is cheaper. Sometimes, the more expensive item is the more cost effective purchase because it lasts longer, doesn’t have to be replaced over and over again, doesn’t become a safety hazard, doesn’t cause other problems over time that require more time and more money to fix.
In the housing policy world, Housing First is one of these expensive-is-cheaper solutions. Right now, across the country, Housing First and permanent supportive housing are under fire for having a bigger price tag than some of the other options. But there are decades worth of peer-reviewed research and data that prove that Housing First is the most cost effective long term option to address people’s homelessness. Housing First has higher success rates in terms of people remaining housed, it leads to better sustained drug and alcohol treatment outcomes, and it reduces costs across multiple domains, including health care and public safety. Despite the upfront price tag, permanent supportive housing ultimately saves taxpayers’ money.
So, when people give sound bites about the cheapness of so-called solutions to homelessness, I always want to remind everybody about the old Kenyan nugget of wisdom, “Cheap is expensive.”